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| Funerals in Lebanon for Hezbollah fighters killed in Qusayr, including Fadi al-Jazzar's (top) |
Hezbollah -- Iran’s Shiite militia in Lebanon --
seems to have been dealt a body blow in its biggest battle yet in the Syria
war.
Since Sunday, at least 40 of its militiamen were
killed trying to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s army retake the
rebel-held town of Qusayr near the Lebanese border.
Beirut’s independent daily al-Nahar today puts at 38 Hezbollah’s death
toll in Qusayr.
For weeks, fighting has
raged around the town in the
central province of Homs that has been under rebel control since early last
year.
The
intensity of the fighting reflects the importance both sides attach to
Qusayr and its environs.
For Syrian army
planners, Qusayr lies along a strategic land corridor linking Damascus
with the Mediterranean coast, heartland of Assad's Alawite sect.
For the rebels, the
overwhelmingly Sunni Qusayr has served as a conduit for shipments of
supplies smuggled from Lebanon to opposition fighters inside Syria.
Speaking by satellite
from Istanbul, the opposition Free Syrian Army’s Brig. Gen. Abdelhamid Zakariya
told Alarabiya TV news channel viewers that reinforcements reached the rebels
in Qusayr overnight.
“I assure you,” he
said, “Qusayr will not fall” to the Syrian army and its Hezbollah allies.
U.S. President Barack
Obama told Lebanese President Michel Suleiman in a phone call on Monday he was
concerned about Hezbollah militants fighting in Syria to support Assad.
"President Obama expressed
his appreciation to President Suleiman and the Lebanese people for keeping
Lebanon's borders open and hosting refugees from Syria, and pledged continued
U.S. support to help Lebanon manage this challenge," the White House said
in a statement summarizing their phone call.
It said the two leaders
agreed, "All parties should respect Lebanon's policy of disassociation
from the conflict in Syria and avoid actions that will involve the Lebanese
people in the conflict. President Obama stressed his concern about Hezbollah’s active and
growing role in Syria, fighting on behalf of the Assad regime, which is counter
to the Lebanese government’s policies.”
At the State Department’s press briefing
yesterday, Patrick Ventrell also told reporters:
“The United States
strongly condemns the Assad regime’s intense air and artillery strikes this
weekend on the Syrian town of Qusayr, along the Lebanese border, where more
than 90 people were reportedly killed. The Assad regime deliberately provoked
sectarian tensions through its assaults, which we saw recently in Sunni
massacres in the towns of Bayada and Banias. We reject the regime’s use of
sectarian-driver war to divide the Syrian people. The Assad regime and its
supporters who continue to commit crimes against the Syrian people should know
that the world is watching and they will be identified and held accountable.
“We also condemn
Hezbollah’s direct intervention in the assault on Qusayr, where its fighters
are playing a significant role in the regime’s offensive. Hezbollah’s
occupation of villages along the Lebanese-Syrian border and its support for the
regime and pro-Assad militias exacerbate and inflame regional sectarian
tensions and perpetuate the regime’s campaign of terror against the Syrian
people. We reject Hezbollah’s efforts to escalate violence inside Syria and
incite instability in Lebanon. We continue to fully support Lebanon’s stated
policy of disassociation from the Syrian crisis, and urge all parties in the
region to act with restraint and respect for Lebanon’s stability and security.”
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| Syria's Mufti Hassoun in Iqlim al Tuffah |
Evidence of the high casualty toll suffered by
Hezbollah in the battle for Qusayr over the past two days includes:
- Publication on Facebook of the names, hometowns and portraits of 40 Hezbollah men killed in Qusayr in the last 48 hours
- A high number of funeral processions in predominantly Shiite areas of Lebanon, specially the Bekaa Valley, with pictures of dead fighters posted on windshields and mourners waving yellow Hezbollah flags
- Crowds gathering outside hospitals in the Bekaa and in the courtyard of al-Rasoul al-Aazam Hospital near Beirut airport in addition to the hospitals’ appeals for blood to treat the wounded brought back to Lebanon
- The surprise whistle-stop visit of Syria’s Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun to Lebanon’s Hezbollah-controlled Iqlim al-Tuffah, where he offered condolences to families of Hezbollah fighters killed in Syria
- A commentary and a feature article on the front page of Beirut daily al-Akhbar, which speaks for the so-called “Axis of Resistance.” The commentary justifies Hezbollah’s military intervention in Syria. The feature article quotes relatives and friends hailing the sacrifices of their loved one there.
Al-Akhbar
publisher Ibrahim al-Amin writes in part under the title “Hezbollah in Syria”:
Those
opposing Hezbollah’s political stance and its fighting alongside the regime in
Syria are those precluding Hezbollah from any role in Lebanon. They wish the
Party of God would transform into a charity organization. They would be more
than happy to throw a celebratory event in its honor if it were to give up its
arms. They never stood by Hezbollah at the pinnacle of its resistance to Israel…
Hezbollah
is now fighting terrorists in Syria…
Frankly,
Hezbollah, its leaders, its cadres, its fighters and its masses never wished to
fight in Syria. But it won’t be long before many thank Hezbollah for what it is
doing there today.
Also
in al-Akhbar, Ms Suha Zarakit writes
about “Hezbollah and the duty of Jihadist martyrdom” saying in part:
Funerals
for Hezbollah martyrs were never as sorrowful… because the Resistance fighters
fell in a battle they never planned to wage.
For
two days, many in the Resistance family hardly shut their eyes as they kept
clinging to their mobiles and waiting for news of the battle for Qusayr…
What
was hushed in the previous month came out in the open yesterday. People kept
exchanging photos from the frontline, hurrahs, prayers for the Resistance
fighters, and encouragements to donate blood… They recalled the Hezbollah
fighters’ heroics in the (South Lebanon security zone) liberation war in 2000
and the victory of 2006 (in the Israel-Lebanon war)…
How
can the battle for Qusayr not be just when its objective is to protect the
Resistance’s back...?
One
of the Hezbollah operatives killed in Qusayr and buried yesterday was Fadi
el-Jazzar, a Beirut-born Palestinian who served 14 years
in jail in Israel for a border attack in 1991, before being released in a
prisoner exchange.
In early
2004, Jazzar was released by Israel, along with 434 other prisoners, including
Mustafa Dirani and Abdel Karim Obeid, in exchange for Elhanan Tannenbaum, an
Israeli businessman who was kidnapped by Hezbollah and held hostage for three
years, and the bodies of three IDF soldiers.
